


Had I Known

by magicalgirldoe



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26451184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalgirldoe/pseuds/magicalgirldoe
Summary: When The Cat should have come back for Simon, she didn't.When she does, it's too late.
Relationships: The Cat & Simon Laurent
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

_I always do the right thing._

The Cat could not go back to her book. Her mind couldn’t settle, not even in her peaceful chalet. Instead, she sat in front of the still-burning fire, letting the flames flicker back and forth in her eyes as her tail silently twitched.

_I always do the right thing._

She had given Simon the tape-extracting device, and he had been gone.

That should be the right thing. Because she always did the right thing.

The Cat was no fool. She knew how this train worked. Passengers come aboard, they travel through, they work through their issues, their numbers go down, they leave. Rinse and repeat. Over a hundred years of this and the only thing that shook things up was a change in management.

The train was a living being all its own. It knew what passengers needed. It can assign value to their trauma. It gives them allies, obstacles, friends-everything they need to work through their problems.

So to that end, anything that she-a denizen-did would be planned for by the train. It would all work out in the end, no matter what she did. Why not run a little con, steal a little thing here and there, make a little money on the side? Even if you hurt someone, it’ll just help them work through their issues. All your actions will be evened out by time. In the end, what you did would always be the right thing.

_I always do the right thing._

But now, for once in her life, she wasn’t so sure. Simon had been spiraling when he came to her; furious at Grace, for all the wrong reasons (and in the Cat’s mind, there were certainly proper reasons to be furious with Grace). She knew he wasn’t so well-intentioned that he’d use that device safely, or even rationally.

But it would all be for the better, wouldn’t it? This was the train. If Simon used that device on Grace, it wouldn’t matter if things went badly; it’d all be towards his improvement in the end. Why not just give him the device? It’ll get him out of her fur. It’ll make him happy.

After all, it was the least she could do after-

Well. After she’d left him.

She didn’t mean to, really. The Cat had become many things over the years, but back then she wasn’t a conwoman. She had just been a denizen, brought together with a boy by the train’s planned fate. She hadn’t ever meant to leave him. She just never looked back.

That was another thing. The Cat never looked back. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and what you see clearly can hurt you.

He had called her Samantha.

The Cat had buried that name. Samantha was too personal; The Cat was perfectly detached. It was so much more professional to just be _The_ Cat, the one and only. Always at the top, always in control of the odds.

It also hurt much less to hear it from the mouths of other passengers.

The Cat always does the right thing. That’s her rule, and the rule of the train. The Cat doesn’t look back. It’s a precedent, a way of keeping herself safe and moving forward. Cut your losses and move on with your life; the train will even out the morality of the whole thing.

But Simon was out there, with a tape-extracting device and bad intentions, and she couldn’t help but feel uneasy.

That boy wasn’t going to listen to her warning, she knew that much. He was going to dig himself into a deeper hole.

That didn’t matter. She always did the right thing. Why should she care what happened to him?

The Cat didn’t like to admit it, but she did care. She wasn’t fond of caring. Caring about someone was hard to reason away, hard to file and quantify and move on from. The Cat wasn’t supposed to be a creature that cared, especially not for the bitter, jaded passenger that Simon had become.

After all, it wasn’t like she had cared enough about him to come back for him all those years ago.

That thought stung her. He was right to be angry at her for that. If she had cared for him, wouldn’t she have gone back for him?

No, she couldn’t have cared enough back then.

She cared now.

The Cat sighed, finally rising from in front of the fire. If she always did the right thing, then this would be the right thing too. Slipping into her room, she donned a midnight blue waistcoat, with a lighter blue cravat.

She hadn’t gone back for Simon years ago.

_Better late than never._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your comments on the first half!! Sorry it took me longer than expected to write out the rest of this ^^' Thank you for reading!

The Cat’s shuttlecraft was a fine thing, and it could travel much quicker than she could on her own, but it still took her quite some time to search for the Apex’s car. She wasn’t sure if he would be there, but she was sure he would at least return there. He was so bent on getting back there when he and Grace had come to the chalet. It was as fine a place as any to search for him.

She didn’t end up having to look far.

She was cresting over another nondescript train car when she saw the figures of the Apex in the distance, huddled on the walkway outside their own car. Kids-some she recognized, some she didn’t-but it didn’t matter now. They were all focused on a figure in the center of the walkway; a figure, she realized, that was the one she had come to see.

The Cat parked her shuttlecraft on top of the car she was approaching from, leaping out from the seat to the edge of the car to try and see him more closely. _Well._ Even from the back, she could tell that Simon had certainly changed since he’d stormed out of her chalet. His hair was long, flowing free, and he held himself differently, though she couldn’t quite place how. She paused to leap down, to approach him-for what purpose, she couldn’t tell. But when he rose to his feet, she stopped cold.

Simon’s face was covered in numbers. Even at a distance, she knew the tell-tale green glow. They extended completely over his face, highlighting a mad grin that flashed in the wasteland’s lightning storm.

The Cat took a step back, shocked and horrified. _What happened?_ Even in her time in Amelia’s service, she had never seen a number that high. Simon’s number when he was at the chalet hadn’t gone past his arm. And the look in his eye, the mania on his face…

The image came to The Cat’s mind of when she had first met Simon: a tiny, scared child, clutching his glowing hand, asking where he was and crying out for a companion, for something to cling to in an unfamiliar world. The boy who knew her before she was The Cat. The boy who had cared about her, even if it was more than she ever gave him.

This wasn’t that boy. There wasn’t any of him left in those eyes.

_Oh, Simon, what happened to you?_

For a split second, she thought she saw him weeping.

 _Do you see yourself as I do right now?_ Her heart seemed to ache. _Are you weeping for the life you could have had, if only it hadn’t happened this way? Are you weeping for the self you lost?_

Shaken, The Cat felt as though she couldn’t move. She wondered if she should go down there, try to stop him, try to do something.

It wouldn’t matter. She was too late.

She heard the screeching before she saw it. From somewhere in the wasteland, a Ghom flew through the air, barely breezing past her on the top of the car before leaping upon Simon and pinning him to the ground. He struggled, trying to get out from under it, but the beast had him in its clutches.

The Cat watched in horror as the Ghom sucked the life out of Simon. It turned his body, his hair, his bones to ash, and she could not look away. She only saw the look on his face, the contorted cry with eyes blown wide in pure fear, before it melted away into nothing. His strangled cry lingered on the air even as he fell away, rattling in her ears, the pain he felt as he died apparent in every pitch.

She barely registered the Ghom exploding. She only stood, frozen, the realization shaking her from the inside out. Simon was dead. Simon was dead, and she had watched him die.

She had arrived too late to save him.

Grace approached what was left of him, with the Apex kids around her. The Cat still did not move. She couldn’t go down there, couldn’t face them yet; not with the sound of Simon dying still in her ears.

It wasn’t until they had all filed into the Apex car that she dared leap down onto the walkway. His corpse-what you could call a corpse-was still there. She approached it, slowly, in shock, as if it might turn back into him at any moment.

Seeing it up close only filled her with a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach. It was all too real. Simon was dead. He wasn’t coming back.

The Cat curled up next to the pile of ash, her paws tightly held under her and her head bowed. Her nose very nearly brushed the ash. A gust of wind could send it all flying onto her. She didn’t care.

Tears fell from her feline eyes. “Simon…”

_I was too late._

Too late in so many ways. Too late to stop him from spiraling this far. Too late to stop the Ghom from getting him. Too late to stop him from using the tape-extracting device, to stop him from getting his number that high.

Too late, all those years ago, to go back from him, show him that she had cared. Too late to show him that she had cared now.

Too late to stop him from becoming the person he was when he died.

She could not help but think: was this her fault, in its own sick way? If she had stayed by his side, would he have ever become like this?

If she had stayed by his side, would Simon have lived?

She always did the right thing. That was her belief, her role on the train.

But Simon was gone.

_Was this the right thing?_

She wasn’t so sure. The thought made bile rise in her throat.

She stayed there for a long time, not moving, just letting the tears flow out from her. It seemed like they would never stop.

Eventually, she heard the sound of the train car door opening, and the sound of Grace’s sneakers walking towards her. Grace stopped in front of her. She did not look up.

“If you’re going to wheel me, just get on with it.”

Grace did no such thing. Instead, she kneeled down beside the ash and gently took The Cat in her arms. The Cat did not resist, if only because she didn’t have the energy.

“I’m sorry. I know you cared for him.” A pause. “I did too.”

The Cat felt the tears coming again, renewed. “I came to…to try to talk to him. I didn’t realize-“

“I know.”

“I was too late.” The Cat felt her thoughts spilling out. She’d never have spoken to Grace like this, not under normal circumstances, but this….this defied any scenario she could ever imagine, and she couldn’t hold everything she felt in her small frame. “I could have stopped him, I could have come back for him-“

“Hey.” Grace held her slightly away from her body, so that The Cat could look up at her. “This isn’t your fault.”

The Cat only stared back at her.

“Simon made his choices.” She sighed. “I know….I know how you feel. You feel like you could have saved him. But he chose to be this way. He was hurting, but…he still did this.”

The Cat remained silent.

“We…we couldn’t have fixed this for him. And it hurts, but…” Grace’s voice cracked, her own tears coming as she trailed off. “I’m sorry.” The Cat only nodded, pressing her head back to Grace’s chest.

Eventually, Grace set her down, still beside what was left of Simon. “You can come inside if you want,” she said, rising to her feet. “We won’t hurt you. I….I’m trying to fix things.”

The Cat did not respond. She only turned to look again at the pile of ash.

Grace nodded, then turned and silently returned to the Apex’s car. The door closed behind her with a click, leaving The Cat alone on the walkway once again.

_Was this the right thing?_

She still wasn’t sure.

But she bowed her head, pressed next to where his head would have been. She thought of that scared little boy she had met, all those years ago, back when he had smiled and held her close and stayed always by her side.

She held him in her heart, even as the winds of the wasteland slowly blew the ash away.

When she spoke her last words to him, it was not as The Cat, but as Samantha.

“Au revoir, Simon.”


End file.
